


"practice"

by esperink



Series: soulwritten [2]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Chloe Valentine is Bad At Feelings, Jealousy, Other, Unrequited Love, i saw this as a tag on something else and they were like why isn't this a tag, so let's make it a tag, this is so sad alexa play despacito, uhh not sure what else to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 11:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17918018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esperink/pseuds/esperink
Summary: Chloe didn't think having Soulmates was fair.





	"practice"

**Author's Note:**

> well, you know me. i don't know how to leave things as is (see: mbgsac and the not quite series). I'm not sure how many of these I will do, tbh. At least one more, I think.

Chloe didn’t actually start writing to her Soulmate until she was thirteen.

Sure, when she was twelve, she was given the lessons. Her Soulmate had even written her first, a simple greeting. She saw Jake and Christine start writing to their Soulmates regularly.

But something about Soulmates scared her.

So it wasn’t until Chloe was thirteen that she wrote back, and even then, it wasn’t often. Unlike her friends, who seemed to want to actually get to know their Soulmates, who asked questions and talked to their Soulmates at least once every other day.

Her Soulmate seemed nice, at least.

And when she was fourteen, she learned that her Soulmate was a girl. That scared her too, a bit. After all, girls dated boys, right? She had almost brought it up to her parents, but she didn’t think they’d appreciate it all that much.

When Chloe was fifteen, her parents started arguing. It happened almost every night, and she didn’t understand.

They had been Soulmates, hadn’t they? And weren’t Soulmates supposed to be perfect for you? Soulmates weren’t supposed argue daily.

Soulmates were supposed to be forever.

Her parents divorced when she was fifteen. She started to write to her Soulmate less and less, which probably wasn’t fair, but she’d already learned that the world wasn’t fair.

When she was sixteen, she fell in love.

She wasn’t sure what happened, or when. Maybe it was a gradual thing, or maybe it was all at once,, but when Jake laughed at something Christine had said on the last day of the school year, her breath caught in her throat and she was filled with a warm, fluttery feeling.

And suddenly, this whole Soulmate thing felt a lot more unfair.

She stopped writing to her Soulmate.

* * *

 “I have an idea,” Chloe said one day.

She and Jake were at her house, attempting to do homework. Keyword attempting. Chloe had, for the most part, been distracted by her idea. Christine was at play rehearsal, where she spent most of her days now.

“What if we… date?” Chloe said when Jake had put down his pencil and looked at her. He raised an eyebrow at her suggestion. “I mean, don’t you want experience for when you actually meet your Soulmate?” she pressed. “We could just practice.”

“Practice what exactly?”

“Well, you should know how to treat your Soulmate when you meet her, right?” This was manipulative, maybe, but she wanted to be with him, even if just for a little while.

“Yeah, I guess you have a point,” Jake replied slowly, thinking.

“So how about it?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Christine saw that they were holding hands a few days later. Jake had explained that it was Chloe’s idea to practice being in a relationship. Chloe wasn’t able to look Christine in the eye.

Chloe had kissed other boys before (though, not to anybody’s knowledge), but Jake was different. Jake was someone she, dare she say it, genuinely cared about.

It was hard to ignore the voice in the back of her mind reminding her that this was inevitably going to end.

She did a petty thing, once. Petty and purposefully hurtful. She was frustrated with the Universe, how everyone seemed to just accept the Soulmate thing without question or hesitation.

It was near the end of one of Jake’s parties. The party was winding down, people leaving or finding somewhere to pass out. They were alone upstairs, Chloe and Jake, when Chloe grabbed the front of his shirt, stood on her toes, and kissed him. They parted a little while later, and Jake asked if she wanted to take this to his bedroom, to which Chloe nodded.

Afterwards, while Jake was falling asleep, writing on his arm caught her eye and she felt a flash of some indiscernible emotion. She grabbed a pen she’d found on the bedside table. Jake was half asleep so he didn’t notice her write ‘Property if Chloe’ on his thigh.

It was a petty, hurtful thing to do, but if she had to deal with the frustration of someone else having Jake, why shouldn’t his Soulmate?

They had an argument about it, in the morning. Near the end of it Jake was watching her face, looking for something, she didn’t know what. But then he sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and said, “We can’t do this, Chlo.”

“What are you talking about?”

He gestured between them. “This ‘practice’ dating. It won’t end well. So we need to end it right now.”

Chloe’s hands curled, and she felt desperate, almost. She wanted to argue back that it would be fine, but Jake was right.

“Fine,” she said, and left.

When she heard later from Christine that Jake had gained a second Soulmate, she cried in frustration. The Universe was mocking her, surely.

* * *

It took Chloe a long time to accept that Jake would never be hers. And reparations were in order, she knew that.

She apologized to Jake. Since the night of the party, their friendship had been rocky at best. It wasn’t right, what she did, and she knew that when she did it.

Jake forgave her. Chloe wouldn’t have.

At the end of their first semester of college, she wondered if her Soulmate would even be willing to write to her. She picked up a pen and wrote a simple greeting, a ‘hi’ on her arm.

Her Soulmate didn’t write back, but that was okay. She deserved better than Chloe as a Soulmate anyway.

She didn’t erase the greeting from her arm. It was a reminder to herself, that she had fucked up majorly.

Jake had met his Soulmates. Both of them. She thought it was so strange and funny, in its own little way, that he’d already found them. Not one, but both.

Chloe had another apology to do. It was awkward, and a struggle, and she wasn’t even sure if she did it right, but it happened. And Brooke was too nice. Chloe doubted that she’d react like Brooke did, if it had happened to her.

Jake was going to love her, she could tell.

Chloe tried going about her day as normal when she got home. She spent a few minutes collecting herself, but then she saw something on her arm. In green pen ink, a response.

A response from her Soulmate.

She took a deep breath, picked up a pen, and began to write.

**Author's Note:**

> THIS TURNED OUT A LOT SADDER THAN I MEANT IT TO ldjkjfs
> 
> come yell at me on tumblr: esperinkdraws


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